Tehkyram
Character
Darth Amortem, Lord of Grudges
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To give Tehkyram a master and justify his presence among Sith lords, additional purposes could be determined later.
- Image Credit: Ralph Fiennes in Shakespeare's Richard III
- Role: Tehkyram's sith master/mentor/owner
- Links: Tehkyram (apprentice)
- Age: 89
- Force Sensitivity: Master
- Species: Human
- Appearance: His most notable physical features are his deformities: he has very visible kyphosis, which results in an even more noticeable limp. Aside from the deformity, he still looks several decades younger than he actually is, perhaps due to his manipulation of the force. He eschews the traditional ornate robes of a sith lord in favor of mundane, black form-fitting clothing. It is an eccentric personal preference, and often-suggested to be borne from self-loathing.
- Name: Darth Amortem, Lord of Grudges/Count Rand Typho
- Loyalties: Sith Empire
- Wealth: Considerably wealthy as a Count of Serenno and distinguished Sith Lord. Makes a great deal of his revenue from his family's ancestral land holdings, most of which is farmland.
- Notable Possessions: Library of various historical records and literary works, multiple Sith writings located on Serenno estate
- Skills: Incredibly powerful with the dark side of the force through frustration over his disability/deformity, remarkably intelligent and wizened, incredibly sharp memory
- Personality: At a a glance, the Lord of Grudges seems undeserving of his title. He is often considered to be kind and genteel in his demeanor, often times even affable. Yet those who know the Count well know that this polite and amicable presentation is a mere facade, and that the man is far more bitter and warped on the inside than out. A cursed, twisted body and a childhood of shame have hardened the old man's heart and left him with a resentment of life and obsession with cruelty. He remembers every insult, every wound, every trespass, and will never forget wrongs against him even after he has suitably punished the perpetrator. Bitter and spiteful, he embraces the dark side as a resentment of the natural order, a backlash against all that is good and natural. Politically, he is a hardliner even by Sith standards. While his believes in Imperialism, he believes that the present empire is simply too soft, and not yet fully enacting cruelty upon a galaxy so richly deserving of it. He venerates the Sith who perverted nature: Traya, Vitiate, Plageuis, Palpatine, Krayt, and all the others for their crimes against life itself. While he genuinely respects the wisdom and will of Darth Carnifex and even sees him as a friend, he believes that the Dark Lord's weakness is that he simply isn't hateful enough.
- Weapon of Choice: Usually the force, but does have a lightsaber as a last-ditch effort.
- Combat Function: First line of defense at all times are his slaves, with Tehkyram as a personal bodyguard. Being physically weak, his saber skill is frail and uncoordinated. Given his incredible power with the force he will rely on lightning and telekinetic/telepathic attacks which he can execute quite masterfully.
Darth Amortem was born Rand Typho in 793 ABY on the planet of Serenno, the distinguished heir to a powerful land-owning family. However, as young Rand grew, a problem became evident: the child was deformed. While medical technology did its best, it soon became obvious to the Typho family that young Rand would be deformed for his entire life, and him taking control of the family would be scandalous. While efforts were made to keep Rand from finding out about his family's intentions of disinheriting him, the remarkably bright youth quickly caught on to their intent, and his resentment was born. His parents ceased to be loving authorities and soon became hated antagonists. Every sibling was seen not as a beloved member of the family, but a potential replacement and therefore a threat. Hate came remarkably easy to the aspiring nobleman, especially when his would-be peers looked at his deformity with scorn and derision. They hated him, and he hated them just as much.
If Rand Typho could not be of sound body, he decided that he would at least be of exemplary mind. Spending most of his days confined in the family estate, Typho was a voracious reader. He sought out any and all sorts of information that his family kept in their relatively impressive library. By his coming of age, Rand had already developed a remarkable mastery of all things political and historical. In particular, he found himself drawn to the writings and teachings of the Sith. The Sith lords of ancient times had great appeal to him, men who found themselves surrounded by enmity and triumphed in spite of it. And more importantly, all the while, Rand plotted to ensure that he alone would control the Typho family estate. His plans soon came to fruition, and by 789 ABY, all of Rand's siblings had either lost their lives in various "accidents" or their reputations and thus their status as heir in "scandals". Later that year, Rand's parents themselves were killed in what appeared to be a shocking "double suicide" leaving only Count Rand Typho.
As the head of the Typho House, Count Rand Typhos's governance was brutal and merciless. Taking advantage of loose Serenno laws about "house servants" Rand effectively re-instituted slavery on his property, turning farms into plantations. His Sith studies evident: in line with his readings, Rand believed heavily in a hierarchy of dominance and submission, where the strong ruled over the weak. Of course, as long as he was a crippled hunchback, Rand would never truly become strong, giving him a nagging complex that haunted him his entire life. While the other nobles found him pleasant and amicable in conversation, the Count's callous attitude and deep resentment over his own condition made him ultimately off-putting to anyone who couldn't appreciate the same sort of darkness as him. The Count turned inwards, recusing himself in his personal mansion and laboring furiously to find a way to alleviate his deformity, but to no avail.
To make matters worse, by 804 ABY the 41-year old Count Typho had fallen out of favor with the Grand Duchess Valtro. A resurgent Sith Empire posed a significant threat to the Grand Duchy, and rumors abounded that she would soon have the slaveholder imprisoned or executed for potential sedition or treason. In truth, as much as the Count was enthralled by the resurgent Sith, it was not until after Serenno fell in 805 that he properly pledged his loyalty to them. And the pledge paid off well: while other nobles more aligned with the duchess had their assets seized, House Typho was left intact, making Rand considerably more influential. But the count's ambitions moved beyond that: the Sith had returned, and indeed, he intended to be a part of their rise to power. The Count became an avid intellectual advocate for the Sith cause, and made extensive use of his new greater influence on Serenno to bring the entire world under their sway. The Count became a prominent revanchist figure, arguing heavily for aggressive expansion and the use of force to bring the Galaxy to heel. For all intents and purposes, it was as if Count Typho's life had truly begun.
The Count's first major setback among the Sith came with the rise of the Triumvirate in 815 ABY. Joint rule, in his eyes, was democratic, and unbecoming of the Sith. Typho firmly believed that there must be an Emperor. For many years he resented Darth Moridin for refusing to take on the role himself, and published blistering critiques of the idea. Once more, it seemed that Count Typho would be arrested for Sedition, as the Dark Council increasingly wanted his head. In 826 ABY, however, Darth Moridin personally interceded on the Count's behalf, and brought him into the fold for his coup against the Dark Council. The prospect of a proper Emperor seemed to rejuvenate the Count: later that year he finally married and fathered a son, Darik Tycho, despite his age of 63. When Moridin's coup came about two years later, Count Rand Typho reemerged a triumphant advocate of the new Emperor, praising his genius and celebrating his power.
It was in the aftermath of this coup that Count Typho became acquainted with Imperial Vizier Kaine Zambrano. While the two did differ on the specifics of the ideology, they bonded almost instantly over a mutual interest in Authoritarian Imperialism and a mutual hatred of democracy. They found a common goal: a powerful, unified Sith Empire that could rule the entire galaxy, ruled by a great Sith Lord, one on par with Palpatine or Vitiate. Likewise, they both stressed a need for unity, though perhaps for differing reasons: while Kaine preferred a unified and united Sith, Count Typho just disliked people denying him with a force that couldn't be smoothed over with charm.
[The specifics here will be added as the codex is updated with lore. The general gist of it is that Typho served the Sith quite well, and at Kaine's advice, eventually began training in the ways of the Dark Side to combat his aging. He raised through the ranks of the sith quite handily due to years of resentment giving him a strong magnetism to the dark side, alongside convenient political connections. Count Typho eventually attained the title of Darth Amortem.]
Darth Amortem took a significant role in the drafting of the new Imperial Judicial codex. He butted heads with several of the lords drafting it, in particular his own son. Amortem pushed hard for codified maiming and torture as punishment, but was ultimately outvoted by cowriters who deemed such measures "wasteful". Ultimately, a compromise was reached where Sith Lords could apply additional punishments as they see fit. One particular achievement the he was proud of was working in the "residential" exemption for slavery from his prime, even in the face of strong abolitionist sentiment. The only unilateral defeat that Amortem suffered during the writing of the codex was on Article Eleven: no loophole was ever enacted that allowed his favorite artists to bypass the Imperial Censorship Bureau altogether.
In the twilight of his life, Darth Amortem finally took it upon himself to take an apprentice, partially at the advice of Kaine. He scoured the galaxy for worthy scholars and academics, inviting them to his estate to study under him. Yet he did not find who he was looking for until a Mandalorian taskmaster offered to sell him a particularly large Karkarodon by the name of Tehkyr'am. The elderly master sensed a remarkable darkness in the slave, and purchased and used him in ways that only amplified and agitated that darkness. To his delight, his would-be apprentices assisted him in goading on the slave (now called Tehkyram), possibly due to Amortem's insulting declaration that he would be studying as one of them as well. And in due time, Tehkyram began to blossom, butchering his "peers" and rising to the top as the only one worth of apprenticeship under Amortem.
